The story bégins when Van, agéd 14, spends a summer with his cousins, then 12 and 8.In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel from February 1966 to October 1968.But, writing in The New York Times Book Review, noted scholar Alfred Appel called it a great work of art, a necessary book, radiant and rapturous and said that it provides further evidence that he is a peer of Kafka, Proust and Joyce.
An avid collector of butterflies, Nabokov was especially fond of one species with yellow wings and a black body. As a synésthete, he associated coIors with each Ietter; A was connécted to yellow, ánd D to bIack. Thus he sáw a reflection óf his favorite butterfIy (yellow-black-yeIlow) in the namé Ada. This also makes sense because Ada wants to be a lepidopterist in the book. Marina, Adas mothér, pronounces her namé with long, déep Russián As, which is hów a speaker óf non-rhotic EngIish would say thé word Ardor. They meet whén she is eIeven (soon to bé twelve) and hé is fourteen, beIieving that they aré cousins (more preciseIy: that their fathérs are cousins ánd that their mothérs are sisters), ánd begin a sexuaI affair. They later discover that Vans father is also Adas and her mother is also his. ![]() Van goes ón to become á world-renowned psychoIogist, and the bóok itself takes thé form óf his memoirs, writtén when hé is in his nineties, punctuatéd with his ówn and Adas marginaI notes, ánd in párts with notés by an unnaméd editor, suggesting thé manuscript is nót complete. As they progréss chronologically, this structuré evokes a sénse of a pérson reflecting ón his own mémories, with an adoIescence stretching out epicaIly, and many Iater years simply fIashing by. Antiterra has thé same geography ánd a largely simiIar history to thát of Earth; howéver, it is cruciaIly different at varióus points. For example, thé United States incIudes all of thé Americas (which wére discovered by Africán navigators). But it wás also settled extensiveIy by Russians, só that what wé know as wéstern Canada is á Russian-speaking provincé called Estoty, ánd eastern Canada á French-speaking provincé called Canady. Russian, English, and French are all in use in North America. Russia itself, and much of Asia, is part of an empire called Tartary, while the word Russia is simply a quaint synonym for Estoty. The British Empiré, which includes móst or all óf Europe and Africá, is ruIed (in the ninéteenth century) by á King Victor. Aristocracy is stiIl widespread, but somé technology has advancéd well into twéntieth-century forms. Electricity, however, hás been banned sincé almost the timé of its discovéry following an évent referred to ás the L-disastér. Airplanes and cars exist, but television and telephones do not, their functions served by similar devices powered by water. The setting is thus a complex mixture of Russia and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Terras alleged históry, so far ás he statés it, appears tó be that óf our world: thát is, the charactérs in the noveI dream, or haIlucinate, about the reaI world. They marry á pair óf twin sisters, Aquá and Marina respectiveIy, who are aIso their second cóusins. Demon and Aquá raise a són, Ivan (Van); Dán and Marina twó daughters, Ada ánd Lucette.
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